Myths
and Realities: Saudi
Arabia Re-examined
New
Republic Symposium on Public Policy
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[Part
2] Question and Answer Session
Martin Peretz:
Can I ask Ambassador Jordan a question? When you would go
to speak to certain officials urging them to look at the
emerging evidence that terrorism was being supported from
Saudi Arabia, would there be indifference, incredulity, or
what?
Robert Jordan: No. The response was uniformly one
of sincerity and cooperation. At the same time, they would
say, give us names and give us information, and we'll go
round these people up. Part of the problem we had -- and
this is reflected in the 9/11 Commission Report as well --
it is so incredibly difficult to get those names.
I dealt with our Treasury Department continually and would
continually ask for names and intelligence information
that could be shared with the Saudis so that we could nab
these individuals, and rarely would we actually have
names. When we did, we were able to freeze bank accounts
-- in some cases, detain these people. There were a number
of people who were under surveillance by the Saudis, but
it did not appear feasible to have a case that could be
put together to round them up and bring them in. We got
better at it.
Martin Peretz: Is the Saudi government so
scrupulous about winning a conviction in court?
Robert Jordan: No, I don't mean to imply it that
way at all. What I'm saying is, even sufficient probable
cause to round these people up was sorely lacking in many
instances.
The general counsel of the Department of Treasury, David
Aufhauser and I, spent a great deal of time trying to get
enough information to give to the Saudis. We were able to
get better information as time went on. But, there was not
very much evidence on individuals.
By contrast, we did have some real successes on the
charity front. For example, the Al Haramain charity
finally has been closed. Some would say it has taken about
a year too long for that to happen. But, we found that
their branches were actually supporting al Qaeda
operations in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya, and East Africa.
So, those branches were closed down, and the individual
head of Al Haramain was finally removed from his position
and is now under serious investigation.
But the individuals -- I think this is an area where there
needs to be more traction and more activity. The problem
we've had is not having enough evidence shared with each
other to identify them.
Martin Peretz: Was this a result of American
intelligence not having information or not being willing
to share information?
Robert Jordan: A little bit of both. In some cases,
you don't want to divulge sources and methods, and so we
had, frankly, some difficulty in getting information out
of our intelligence agencies from time to time. I think
the Treasury found some frustrations in that regard. We
also did not have -- at least at the beginning -- a
sufficient working relationship with the Saudis. What
information they had, they were reluctant to share with
us. We were reluctant to share with them. So, it took us
about a year after 9/11 before we were heading in the
right direction in terms of this type of cooperation. It
was extremely frustrating.
Martin Peretz: Jamie.
Jamie Gorelick: I would answer that question
slightly differently. I think that puts way too much of a
burden on the United States. The people with whom we would
be asked to share the information were, in some instances,
not reliable counterparties. It suggests that the Saudis
themselves were blind to what was going on in their
country. I don't know what the ground truth is, but I
don't believe that because once they felt threatened
themselves in 2003, there was a sea change in their
activity, which when we were threatened and they felt they
were not, they didn't do. There was a long time between
September 11, 2001 and the period in 2003 when the Saudis
kicked into gear, and I don't think the change was whether
we could share bits of information about people on the
ground.
The fact is that they were -- and I think still are --
coming to grips with the Faustian bargain that they have
made, which is that they have ceded whole parts of their
government to religious elements that have either
acquiesced then, or worst, fomented the kind of activity,
which produces an al Qaeda and which creates the
conditions for people who agree with al Qaeda to function
not only against ourselves but also against them.
What they need to
do is address that bargain, because as Marty asked in -- I
thought his first question was terrific -- how could it be
that one arm of what they do can endanger the other? They
have to come to grips. I think Bob is right in pointing to
2003 as the turning point, but they have to deal with the
money that they put out in foreign assistance, the money
that they put out in religious assistance, and the
acquiescence at a minimum in the funding domestically of
elements who are now turning around and destabilizing
their own regime.
You know, I would note in this regard that there are real
costs. If you talk to American companies who operate in
Saudi Arabia -- and Bob can speak to this better than I
can -- but just the ones that I talk to are redoubling
their efforts in security, both for their personnel and
their facilities. Well, if you do that, the costs of doing
business and the willingness to do business is heavily
affected.
There are real
costs, and I think they have some hard decisions in front
of them. I personally would not put the blame for this on
the United States and our inability to share individual
bits of information with them. I think where there is a
will there will be a way.
Robert Jordan: Just for clarification, I'm not
putting blame on anyone. I was trying to sort of explain
historically what their interchange was, but I certainly
agree that the Saudis have got to assume responsibility
for identifying individuals. It shouldn't just be up to
the United States, of course.
Question &
Answer Session Open to the Audience
Martin Peretz: Ladies and gentlemen, the man in the
back. This is not because we know that you can't speak to
the audience. You're speaking to millions.
Question: I'd like to just better understand the
support for terrorism in Saudi Arabia. Just characterize
that support. Who they are? You mentioned the religious
element. Are they growing? Where were they before 9/11?
What's changed? So, we can get at the root cause, which is
the support for the terrorists rather than the terrorists
themselves.
Martin Peretz: I open it up to the panel.. ..Okay,
Adam?
Adam Zagorin: I wrote down a recent intelligence
estimate before I came here. You can take that for what
it's worth. I guess the population is about 20 some
million.. ..There seems to be some agreement that there
would be between 500 and 1,500 hardcore activists. Now,
that's a range that differs by a factor of three, right --
500 to 1,500, but compared to the 20 million, it's a very
minuscule figure. On the other hand, you don't need more
than five people or even maybe less to commit some
atrocity. There's obviously been some of that.
My sense is that there is a great deal of work to be done,
and the trick here will be to maintain the discipline in
these efforts going forward not just next month and next
year but forever because the situation lends itself to the
lack of the kind of institutional political structure and
lends itself to having these problems potentially continue
unless vigilance is maintained.
But, I do think there's probably a very large number of
people in Saudi Arabia who are not thrilled about the
United States, not thrilled about U.S. support of Israel,
not thrilled about our invasion of Iraq, and not thrilled
about the visas, and you can just go on and on. But, I
think that the number of those people who actually are
happy to see Osama bin Laden killing people and the
violence, especially giving that there are Saudi victims
of these activities in the Kingdom. I think that those
people are quite limited in the ones who are happy to see
that kind of thing happening.
Also, we do have -- for what it's worth and it's probably
worth quite a bit at the moment -- joint centers where
Saudis and American security people sit side-by-side in
Riyadh at undisclosed locations. So, the communication
problems that Ambassador Jordan talked about, where one
side knows something and the other side doesn't -- by the
time they figure out what it is that they both know, you
know, some other thing that's happened. This is people
analyzing things together and actually pulling on the same
oar in the same room at the same time, and that's going on
in the security area and also, to some degree as well, in
the financial area.
That's encouraging. It's just that, again, to sustain this
over time and to appear that there's such a level of
U.S.-Saudi collaboration that it causes a backlash
publicly among the public there who objects to these other
U.S. policies. It's a delicate balance, but I think
that the Kingdom is not overrun with violent, plotting
anti-Americans. There are plenty of Anti-Americans, but
they're not violent and plotting.
Martin Peretz: But, it seems a little implausible.
There's nothing I know, but my guess is that there are
more than 1,500 sleeper people in Madrid. I mean I just
came back from Europe. First of all, they've arrested
almost that number.
Faye Bowers: Okay, I wanted to add on a little bit
to what Adam said from when I was there in December. I
spoke with three intelligence officials who were
participating in that joint counterterrorism center. I
think bottom line, truth be told, they don't know how many
terrorists there are. Accurate numbers were never kept of
people who went to the training camps in Afghanistan in
the '80s or '90s and who returned. For a long time, I
think Saudi Arabia didn't believe it had a problem with
terrorism or with extremism. They didn't see it until
after those May and November attacks that everyone talks
about. But you know, the intelligence officials told me
when I was there -- there could be six, there could be 60,
there could be 600, or 600,000. So, that's not a very
comforting figure.
The other thing I found in terms of talking to people --
normal Saudis -- not one of them seemed to be for terror
attacks for sure and wasn't thrilled with what Osama bin
Laden was doing in their part of the world. But, they also
were extremely angry at the United States' foreign policy.
Every person I spoke with without exception had to sort of
vent for the first few minutes that I was with them. While
I was there, Saddam Hussein was captured. It was on their
mind -- American policy toward Iraq and the Palestinians
especially. It was at the time where the United States was
really pressuring Saudi Arabia to make changes in their
educational system, to change their textbooks, to go after
the religious leaders, and to come forward and make
statements against terrorism and for cooperating with the
United States.
Overall, the people, I think, are really against
terrorism, but they're really also against U.S. foreign
policy, and they have sympathy toward groups like Hamas
and Islamic Jihad, as giving to charity is part of their
culture. Almost everyone told me that they contribute
independently to those kinds of groups because of the
anger they feel toward U.S. foreign policy in the region.
Robert Jordan: Well, to get back to the question of
where do these terrorists come from and how did this all
get started, I think you do have to flash back about 20
years to the joint U.S.-Saudi efforts against the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan. It was part of American foreign
policy to encourage Islamist extremists to wage jihad
against the godless communists who had invaded
Afghanistan. So, there was a great deal of cooperation
between our government and the Saudis to encourage these
young men to go off to these camps and to fight in
Afghanistan. The best estimate is somewhere between 15,000
and 20,000 young Saudi men had gone off to do this.
The Soviets were then kicked out; so, what happens? A
number of them started wandering back. A number of them
tried to look for some other cause. At this moment, it was
almost like a perfect storm of converging realities here.
You had an education system that had been influenced by
the Muslim brotherhood from Egypt and a number of teachers
who had been kicked out of Egypt and Syria for being too
extremist. They
find their way to Saudi Arabia, and they have 20 years of
teaching.
MR. .. : Some of them went to the United States.
Robert Jordan: And, some went to the United States.
They have 20 years of teaching. You have a demographic
time bomb and one of the highest birth rates in the world.
You have almost half the population, at this point, under
the age of 15. It's a nation of kids. So, you have the
jihadis coming back and you have Osama bin Laden wanting
to essentially become an outsourcing organization to kick
Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. He went to the Saudi
government and asked if he could be sort of a militia to
kick out Saddam Hussein. The Saudis turned him down and
brought a half-a-million U.S. troops in instead, and this
boiled the water even further.
You also have a declining per capita income -- it's about
a quarter of what is was in the 1980s. You have a
burgeoning population without job skills; you have angry
young men who can't get jobs, and therefore can't get
married or even talk to a female. It is a cauldron that
bubbles and boils. So now, we're seeing, perhaps far too
late, the efforts by the Saudi government to put the genie
back in the bottle, and we're going to have to be
supportive of that, but only time will tell if we'll have
any success. But that's frankly how it all got started.
The 9/11 Commission Report is very good in its summary of
this.
Jamie Gorelick: I agree with Bob's recitation of
the history. I think it's very helpful to look back and
see what has happened. The only point I would make here is
that if we focus only on those of whatever number are the
hardcore individuals dedicated to terrorism, we're really
missing the larger and more dangerous picture. We, in our
9/11 Commission Report, are very explicit about this --
that there are two problems. There are the hardcore
individuals, the religious zealots, who have objectified
Westerners and who have identified us -- who refuse to
convert to their form of religion or abide by their policy
dictates -- as people who essentially don't deserve to
live. The only way to deal with them is to kill or capture
them. They're not going to be retrievable.
The larger problem, in our view -- or at least as large --
is this approval of that behavior and the sense that it is
justified. It's not just the fact that that approval is
manifested in monetary support for terrorist activities or
for imams who spew hate. It is that if we don't address
those atmospherics, we will increasingly permit a view
within the larger society that we are a greater threat
than Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I think that's what you
have here. If we don't address that, we have a very large
problem and a generational threat to us in the hostility
that one finds in various places in the Muslim world.
We are -- and I think Faye had it right - in some places
despised, and this is in a country where we were very well
regarded and where the two populations were very close. I
just don't think we can afford that. We have in our book a
fairly long discussion of this and of the ways in which we
have to regain the moral high ground, where we have to
find common values, and where we have to dissuade the
larger populations.
If you look at the Pew data -- and I'm not suggesting that
we make our foreign policy or any decisions for that
matter based on polls -- but it is pretty striking that
after 9/11 and even after the invasion of Afghanistan,
which had the support of much of the Muslim world because
it was viewed as justified, our standing in the world was
very high and there was a unity of purpose, I think,
around the world to address the threat of terrorism.
In the last couple of years, that has changed
dramatically. So, if you look at places like Turkey, which
is our -- in many ways -- strongest ally in the region,
our standing has dropped from somewhere like two-thirds of
the population to 20 percent. In Egypt, which is the
second largest recipient of our foreign aid for 20 years,
we are at the zero approval level, and I guess that's
within the margin of error of two percent. It could be two
percent or maybe it's minus two percent. But, it's still
pretty low. You see this around the Muslim world. I think
that that is a recipe for even greater disaster, so I
would not focus only on the smaller dedicated group.
I would just make one anecdotal remark. My experience with
domestic terrorism suggests that the societal attitudes
are important. When we were experiencing abortion clinic
bombings and murders in this country, they seemed
unstoppable because there would be Web sites where doctors
who performed abortions would have big Xs through their
faces, and there was essentially a hit list out there. The
murder stopped when the Catholic Church in Boston -- after
a particularly egregious event in Boston -- said, this has
to stop. This is not the way that that we treat people
however we think about abortion. We do not take lives. The
fact is that it stopped after that. Now, I'm not saying
there's some - to use a bad phrase in this regard -- magic
bullet, but I do think that it is very important to
address these societal attitudes.
MR. .. : Yes.
Question: I was just hoping you might explore with
a little more granularity a few of the particular sources
of anti-American attitudes in Saudi Arabia. I'm curious,
for instance, to what extent does the -- when you refer to
the broader context -- population or a substantial segment
of it sympathize with the objectives of Al Qaeda if not
the methods. For instance, establishing a Sunni Wahhabi
dominated caliphate extending from North Africa through
Central Asia --
MR. .. : Don't forget Spain.
Question: Yes, well absolutely -- and Austria, I
guess. They may have something to say about it if that
ever is on their doorstep. To what extent, for instance,
is the hostility against the U.S. intervention in Iraq
motivated principally by a concern that a democratic Iraq
will be Shi'ite dominated given tribal tensions that the
status quo ante was a comfortable known as objectionable
as it appeared to be on other grounds?
Martin Peretz: Anybody?
Faye Bowers: I have a couple of responses to that.
One is that I don't think the people are a monolith. I
think we sort of have a perception here in America that
everyone in Saudi Arabia is devoutly, rabidly religious. I
don't think they all share the same level of devoutness at
all.
I think the other thing that really formed perceptions,
when I was there in December, was television. You know,
they watch 24-hour cable like we do, but they see
different pictures than we do. For example, in Iraq, they
were seeing pictures of Iraqis being murdered every day --
of Iraqi women, and children, and young men, and various
things like that.
In the Palestinian territories, the same thing -- day and
day out, they are seeing the assassinations, they were
seeing the -- what they would call -- Israeli
offensiveness toward Palestinians. They saw that daily,
and I think it has a really wearing effect on people.
Then, they also see what they see to be total, unqualified
U.S. support for those activities. It angers people, I
felt, to no end. You know, they don't come out and say,
"Oh, we support Osama bin Laden, and we want this
broad caliphate from here to here and we want it to
include el Andelus, by the way, too." I didn't hear
anyone say anything like that, but it was more anger
toward the United States and Israel.
Martin Peretz: I want to say something about the
continuous allusions to Israel. There are about 25,000
Palestinians in Saudi Arabia. My own sense is certainly
that in the elite, nobody gives a damn about the
Palestinians. There is, in fact, the kind of inter-ethnic
contempt for the Palestinians that I have never heard in
Israel itself. Now, you know, there are a lot of
Palestinian refugees around in the Middle East. They
cannot go to Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, it is so
difficult for a Palestinian to get Saudi citizenship.
There are what you have to call racist laws against Saudi
Arabian citizenship for Palestinians.
Now, I'm not saying that you get bombarded with images,
and it doesn't have an effect. If you see Al Jazeera, you
live in a different world than you live in this country.
But, it's a little too simple, it seems to me that there
are interests in America who are organizing to say,
"Well, if you could only get the Israelis to stop
doing this." Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a column in The
New York Times the other day that if you could get
Israel to do this, and this, and this, then the Arabs will
actually send soldiers to Iraq, and Iran will give up its
nuclear ambitions. That's crap.
Robert Jordan: Let me just add one sort of data
point on the Palestinians. I think a lot of what you say
is accurate about the way Palestinians are viewed in Saudi
society, in terms of those who are actually in the
kingdom. I think it's not totally correct to say that a
lot of --
Martin Peretz: Those are wonderful Palestinians.
Actually, they are teachers and doctors.
Robert Jordan: You bet. Well, they do a lot of
things, but that's correct. They're well educated in many
instances. But, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has spent
a great deal of money on hospitals and hospital care for
injured Palestinian children who actually are brought to
Saudi Arabia for treatment. It doesn't mean that there's a
"kumbayah" spirit going on necessarily. But,
what it does mean is that I think they are expending some
resources. As many of you know, they had one of these
telethons where they raised a gazillion dollars for the
children of martyrs, and martyrs included suicide bombers,
and this was a very controversial issue between us at the
time.
But, I think that the greater point isn't whether it's
rational or correct for someone in Saudi Arabia to have
this attitude that America is too close to Israel. What
we're really doing here is reporting on the reality and
then how do we deal with it. I think the reality is that
these are the attitudes that we see. The Pew research and
other polling data show us this.
So, what do you do to turn the hearts and minds around? I
think the 9/11 Commission Report, again, has some pretty
good suggestions in that regard. It requires soft
diplomacy, and soft power. It requires citizen exchanges.
It requires a smarter visa policy in the United States to
let the students back in if they can be cleared for
security reasons. It requires reaching out to both
societies instead of what I fear is happening, which is
kind of a mutual disgust with each other right now, and I
think that is the great danger in the relationship.
Jamie Gorelick: I would just add one comment here.
We looked at this issue of whether the hostility is the
product of our policies or the product of this mix of
political and religious zeal. We certainly did not
conclude that if we changed our policies, this problem
would go away. I mean we took a lot of care in writing
that section of the report because the fact is that you
could throw Israel over the brink today, and it would not
stop this group at all.
Now, that's not to say that we as a country should not be
faulted for not being as engaged as we should be in trying
to foster peace in the Middle East, and I think that there
are many in the Muslim world who see our disengagement
from the peace process in a negative way. Faye is
certainly right that if you look at what bin Laden
predicted -- that the United States' interests in the
Muslim world were to kill Muslims and humiliate them --
when they see pictures from the war in Iraq and when they
see reports from Abu Ghraib prison, he looks like he was
right, and we look like we were wrong. We need to
understand that. That's not to say anything about our
decision to go into Iraq other than you have to understand
how it will be viewed and the critical stakes that we had
in the aftermath in handling it correctly.
So, I think it is a false choice to say, "Is it our
policy, or is it a religious zealotry, or political
religious zealotry?" It's both. If you only see one
piece of it, you're going to miss the fuller and more
accurate picture.
Robert Jordan: Just to back that up, which was a
very perceptive comment, evidence can be seen in the fact
that one of Al Qaeda's principle demands was that the
United States withdraw its military troops from Saudi
Arabia. We announced in the first week in May 2003 that we
were pulling out of Prince Sultan Air Base. The next week,
we had the three suicide bombings at the housing compounds
in Riyadh. It didn't make a bit of difference that we were
pulling our troops out. Al Qaeda was still on the march,
and it hasn't deterred them in the slightest.
Question: Several of you mentioned individual
reformists that you spoke with in Saudi Arabia or have
known, and, of course, we have read about some of the very
preliminary steps that the Saudi government has taken in
terms of local elections. But, my specific question -- and
perhaps this is best directed toward Ambassador Jordan
since you were there for two or three years not too long
ago. Is your sense of the Saudi Majlis Ash Shura, because
this is the consultative body, that on the one hand, it
would be very easy to write it off as an appointed body
but that has also shown signs of some activism, some
independence? And also, any of the comments the panelists
might have on local elections in Saudi Arabia because,
with some hesitancy, the Saudis do seem to be moving,
albeit very slowly, on that front. Thanks.
Robert Jordan: Yes, that's an important question.
To start with the local elections, they are now scheduled
for February. Registration to vote will begin next month.
Unfortunately, it appears that women will not be allowed
to vote or to run for office, even though one woman had
announced her campaign to run already.
Apparently, the
give and take within the royal family, calibrating exactly
how far they can go without losing traction with their
people, has at least for the moment, stalled the ability
to include woman in this round. There is a lot of hope
that they will be included in future rounds.
The plan is, after these elections are held for half of
the municipal council seats, that in due course, there
will also then be elections for half of the regional
council seats, and ultimately half of the Majlis Ash
Shura. That is perhaps further down the line than we would
like, but one of the things that is actually happening in
the Majlis is, that even though they are an appointed body
-- they actually have one Shi'a representative in there
right now who is a very well respected business man -- and
they are getting increasing power. They're getting power
to review the budget. They're getting power to interrogate
cabinet ministers, and in fact, about a year-and-a-half
ago, they were reviewing certain pieces of legislations
including a tax bill. They disapproved the tax bill. Well,
the council of ministers had it within its power to
overrule them, but they chose not to.
So, these are just little data points again to suggest
that the Majlis is gaining in stature. They have
committees -- like they have a foreign relations committee
-- I've met with their committees from time to time -- and
the plan is to increase the size of the Majlis to about
200 people. It's about 160 right now. So, this is an
important development and one that I think we need to
delicately nurture without, again, putting the kiss of
death on it by too much grandstanding about how wonderful
this progress is.
Faye Bowers: I would like to just add a couple of
things about that. In the upcoming elections, I think from
women I've talked to there -- and I have a very good
friend and colleague who is a Saudi journalist who writes
now occasionally for our paper. She wrote the story about
the woman who had initiated her own campaign, and it was
quite disappointing that she won't be able to run. But,
this woman also told me -- and from women that I spoke to
in their homes in Saudi Arabia -- this sort of presents
another side of the picture for you -- is that women there
don't want the process to go too quickly either. That's
sort of shocking to me as a woman to find that they maybe
don't want to go too fast. But, that is what many of them
said.
Then, I think also after Saudi Arabia announced that women
couldn't run, they did announce that maybe after the
February elections they would appoint a number of women to
that council. Also, about the Majlis -- when I was there,
the council had appointed three women advisors, which they
didn't want to talk about too much publicly, but I got to
meet with the women advisors, and they were gaining an
incredible amount of power.
At first, they were just consulted about women's issues,
such as breastfeeding in public or things like that. But
after a while, they were given much more, like foreign
policy questions.
My point is that there is movement forward, I think, in
all of these areas. I think in some respects quite
impressive. Again, for us, I think we feel it's at a
snail's pace. For them, these are earthshaking
differences. This one woman I spoke with -- who is now an
advisor to the Majlis -- she is a renowned international
ophthalmologist, and we guess in her early forties. When
she was born, her mother was 13-years-old and was put in
arranged marriages. She was illiterate. They didn't have
girl schools in Saudi Arabia then. Those didn't open, I
believe, until 1962. So, this woman's mother had four
daughters by the time she was 19-years-old and moved to
the United States with her husband, who had some sort of
government job here in the United States. So, all the
girls and the mother were educated in the United States,
and all four girls have post-graduate degrees and have
gone back to Saudi Arabia and are working for women's
issues. It was an incredible story.
Robert Jordan: She, in fact, is the head of the
ophthalmology department at her hospital.
Faye Bowers: That's right. She's also the head of
the seat at Johns Hopkins now as well.
Adam Zagorin: I just wanted to mention a little
bit, in a way, about the sociology of all this. Here in
this country, we've got -- like it or don't like it --
we've got the gay marriage business; we've got garbage on
television in many places or what some people feel is
garbage; and we've got various cases of corruption. The
United States, despite being the richest Western country,
continues to hurdle forward -- or whatever direction you
want to call it -- socially. This creates tensions, which
lead to reaction. So, you have in this country social
conservatives and even lots of other people who are
appalled by the latest manifestation of modernity in our
midst.
Well, if you think about that and then you think about a
very traditional and in some ways almost feudal
arrangement that you would have in Saudi Arabia -- you
need to think of the pace of change that these people are
going through. Now, people have studied traditional
societies undergoing Westernization. There are studies on
this, and it is a stressful thing to live in a society
that is rapidly Westernizing. What you tend to see is all
the things that are associated with stress and anxiety --
higher levels of addiction and alcohol consumptions,
breakups, and shifts from the large family to small
family.
Now, the thing
that Jamie said a minute ago -- I mean, you could pitch
Israel over the brink. You could eliminate the invasion of
Iraq. You have an anxious environment in any country where
you have this rapid pace of change with respect to the
family, with respect to religion, and it's really fairly
typical that there would be some kind of a reaction to
that in the society from conservative and fundamental
elements. Having said that, I personally believe that
Osama bin Laden and his vision of the future has virtually
nothing to offer. I think that the way that he addresses
the problems and some of the predictable social issues in
Saudi Arabia just doesn't really offer much of anything.
Now, in this time of anxiety, some people have certainly
turned to him. But, it's very difficult to imagine a
regime that had anything akin to his outlook that would
provide jobs, that would ease this transition in a
meaningful way, or that would assist the people who are
upset. So, you have this anxious environment in which
people seize on Israel and these other things. It's not
that they're not issues, but they become flashpoints, I
think, for a generalized anxiety, which is going to be
there with or without those things. If it weren't that, it
would be something else.
Martin Peretz: I want to ask Bob question. It's a
historical question. The transfer of wealth from 1973, 10
years on, from the West to Saudi Arabia was enormous. An
economic historian I know at Harvard says that it was
larger than the transfer of wealth to Spain in the age of
discovery. Why was so little made of it?
Robert Jordan: I'm not sure we ever see historical
phenomena while we're in the middle of them. It takes a
while to digest. What we did see, though, was an enormous
change in the early to mid-'80s. The per capita income in
Saudi Arabia was about $28,000, which is about what it was
in the United States at that time. Now, it's about $8,000,
which is a little bit more than it is in Mexico.
So, they've both ramped up, and now, they have gone back
down on a per capita basis. But, I think you just don't
see these phenomena sometimes when you're in the middle of
them. I'm not sure how history will judge the transition
that we're in right now, or when people went through the
Industrial Revolution. When do you see those transitions
taking place?
Martin Peretz: This certainly was a tremendous
opportunity that was forfeited.
Robert Jordan: Of course.
Martin Peretz: One more question.
Question: Since
9/11, I have become a student of Arabic affairs, and I've
heard every expert anybody can name in the room discussing
some of the fundamental issues. I am truly mystified
as to what the outlook is for any positive result in our
relationship with Saudi Arabia and lots of other countries
that are Islamic. It just seems to me, we see the world so
differently that just the very idea that Americans are
raised with cutting a deal is just not possible. It's just
not the way they think.
Martin Peretz:
Anybody want to take this one?
Robert Jordan: I'll take a stab at that.
Martin Peretz: Tackle that cactus. [Laughter.]
MR. .. : To pick up on your final metaphor there
about cutting a deal, this is a part of the world that is
very used to cutting deals of all kinds. If you look at
the history of Islam, there have been any numbers of
internal religious debates. Obviously, there's the
Shi'ite, Sunni split. There was this bab al-ijtihad, the
door of enlightenment, which opened where they were
Greek-influenced debates and scholars within the religion.
Now, obviously, the headlines have gone, with very good
reason, to some of the extremist elements. Without trying
to deny for one second the extremely disturbing tendencies
of the extremist elements and many of their fellow
travelers and supporters, there are a lot of reasonable
people in the Islamic world who just want to get on with
business, and they want to be respected. I don't think
they're that much different than we are, and they
certainly are skilled in having relations with other
groups, cutting deals, and all the rest.
I mean there is a gap. It will probably take a generation
to work through this fix that we seem to be in now. I
think it could be fixed because if you look at their
history and the way that they do business, it suggests
that they like to fix things when it's in their interest
to do so.
Martin Peretz: Bob, the last speaker.
Robert Jordan: Well, the hill is an extremely steep
hill to climb, but I do think there are some points of
hopefulness. One of the most important things that I
worked on during my tenure as ambassador was Saudi
accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), not
because it was doing them a favor but because it is in the
United States' interest to see a stabilization and a rule
of law that is implemented in their trade relations. This
will require them to open up to foreign investment. They
have already passed most of the major legislation that is
required for qualification to the WTO. They are awaiting
the bilateral agreement with the United States.
It is, in my view, critical for their social and political
development that this accession be successful. They would
come into the family of WTO nations. There will be more
job opportunities for women, the birth rate will be
affected, and ultimately, the political and social life of
the country will be affected as well. So, I think there is
hope in that regard. There is hope in this election
situation they're talking about, and there is considerable
interest in reform as we heard today.
I would also broaden this to the entire Gulf and Arab
world. I think we are seeing some very hopeful
developments in places like Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and
certainly in the Emirates. We have a bilateral trade
agreement that has been executed with Morocco. We have
another one with Bahrain that will be before the Congress.
We had a rule of law conference in Bahrain hosted by
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. So, there are hopeful points,
and it does the Arabs and Muslims a disservice to imply
that they're not capable of grasping these issues and
moving their societies forward. There are enormous
impediments, particularly in Saudi Arabia, but I think
we've got to find ways to be supportive without being
intrusive.
Faye Bowers: I just want to add one last thing. To
me, it's particularly helpful to look at other people as
people like yourself. I think when you engage man-to-man
or woman-to-woman with people in that part of the world,
they're just like we are. Moms have concerns about their
kids going to school, getting a good education and getting
a job at the end of that time. They worry about their boys
maybe being exposed to extremism or radical views. But,
they have the same sorts of wishes and motives that we do.
I think it really helps a lot to look at people as just
people like us.
Martin Peretz: Thank you, panel. Thank you, guests.
This is the fourth of a series. There will be another one
soon. Thank you.
Copyright �2004
by Federal News Service, Inc.
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